Once he was far enough from Jasper's crumbling quarter to breathe without tasting rust and sorrow, Dorian slipped a cigarette from the battered pack in his coat pocket. He was a marvel—an exquisite fusion of sorcery and science, circuitry braided with soul—but still cursed with every human vice. Hunger clawed at him. Pain and pleasure lit the same old circuits. Cravings for nicotine itched at the back of his throat. And beneath it all, deeper than anything synthetic should reach, pulsed a more dangerous need: to keep the fragile thread that bound him to Jasper's heart from fraying into nothing.
His newly forged mind held only the barest remnants of the man he used to be. Memories came in flickers—disjointed, half-formed—like echoes bouncing through hollow corridors. He remembered waking on a lab table, wires threaded beneath his skin, needles blooming from every surface, the cold taste of steel in the air. Most of Dorian's past had been burned away in the process, deemed extraneous by whatever arcane science had rebuilt him. What little survived wasn't random. They were the memories that refused to die. The ones with teeth. The ones that still bled.
He'd learned not to dwell on the memories too often. By now, he understood the mechanics—how the system ran, how he ran. Pain came easy, same as it always had, no matter the body. Flesh or fabricated, the nerves still sang. And like anyone with sense, he did his best to avoid it.
He chose not to flag another carriage. The walk back would take over an hour, maybe more—but he had time and no appetite for another one of Lysander's thinly disguised inquisitions about Jasper. As he moved through the streets, people glanced his way and offered stiff nods; their civility stretched thin over something sharper. Fear, mostly. Dorian—the Executioner of the King's Will. Lysander's loyal hound. A creature that had no business walking among the living, let alone issuing orders and shaping the future of a kingdom.
They hated him. Some hid it behind manners. Others didn't bother. Given the right moment, the right spark, they'd rip him to pieces with their bare hands.
A chill traced down his spine. Dying once had been unpleasant enough. He had no interest in a sequel.
He found himself wondering, more often than was probably healthy, what kind of man the original Dorian had been—the one whose very real, very human heart still thumped away inside this patchwork body. Had he been good? Fair? Honest, at the very least, with himself?
Had he ever stopped mid-coup to consider whether overthrowing a King might've been a colossal mistake?
Probably not. Idealists rarely do. He'd wanted change—real, lasting change. Coming from the slums, he knew what rot looked like from the ground up. He'd tasted despair, lived inside it, breathed it in like factory smoke. And maybe that was enough to justify tearing down a kingdom.
But just because you knew what suffering looked like didn't mean you knew how to fix it. It just meant you were pissed off and willing to start a fire.
He entered through the security gates, camera reading his face, guards moving aside quickly to let him pass. If anyone was surprised to see Dorian arrive on foot, they didn't show it. Everyone in the palace knew better than to ask questions—the Grand Justiciar didn't tolerate idle curiosity. The guards feared him too, though they wore their fear like a well-fitted uniform: discreet, professional, and entirely without comment.
Lysander's palace was a strange blend of past and future—hailed as a marvel of modern architecture, yet at its core, it still resembled an overblown Arthurian castle. Jasper's father had envisioned it, his designs a fusion of grandeur and function, with towering spires and intricate stonework meant to inspire awe. But Lysander had left his mark, tweaking the original blueprint with his own brand of paranoia. Security features were added, —surveillance hidden in the shadows, walls reinforced, edges sharpened. It was no longer a monument to kingship; it was a fortress, one built to withstand more than just time.
Dorian moved through the palace corridors with the soundless certainty of someone who knew exactly how far he had to go—and how many people would rather he never arrived. The halls were long, gleaming with polished stone and inlaid circuitry, a seamless marriage of old-world opulence and cutting-edge control. Light hummed faintly overhead; long shadows slid along the tapestries and portraits of kings long dead. The walk to Lysander's study was not long by design, but it always felt endless, drawn out by silence, the echo of his footsteps, and the weight of the King's scrutiny waiting just beyond the next door. He entered without a knock. He knew Lysander was waiting for him, tracking the progress of his arrival in real time, each footfall traced by unseen cameras, each breath cataloged by a system that never slept.
"Dorian. Home at last.
Lysander didn't sound upset—more curious than anything, likely wondering how the interrogation had gone. He always had a talent for detachment, for turning cruelty into something academic. It was just like him to make Dorian the instrument of Jasper's suffering, to twist the knife by placing the responsibility squarely in his hands.
Jasper's name had been the first thing Dorian remembered when he woke in the new body—raw, disoriented, surrounded by wires and sterile light. Not his own name. Not the coup. Not Lysander. Just Jasper. Lysander had never forgiven him for that. And he probably never would.
"Good evening to you too, my KIng."
Dorian stepped closer, closing the distance between them with the quiet inevitability of habit—or need. Whether he liked the man standing before him or not, whether he questioned—daily—how he could have made the mistake of placing Lysander on the throne, none mattered in that moment. His body, though artificial, had been designed with specific needs. Cravings. It remembered what it meant to want the warmth of another. To ache for contact. Even when the mind recoiled, the machine longed.
He had been made for this—originally. Not for justice, not for war, but to satisfy. To fulfill someone's desire as seamlessly as any human lover, perhaps even better. A creation meant to bring pleasure, to mimic devotion. An illusion of intimacy wrapped in flesh that never tired, never questioned, never refused. Designed to obey, to charm, to endure. It hadn't worked out that way, not exactly. Fate—or something crueler—had rewritten his purpose. But Dorian still remembered what he'd been made for. The blueprint lingered in his bones, in how his body responded to proximity, tone, and command. Especially in Lysander's presence, that original programming stirred beneath the surface—unwanted but inescapably familiar. A ghost of function masquerading as instinct.
"Ah, there will be time for this later."
It wasn't like Lysander to refuse him.
"All right." Dorian stepped back, slow and deliberate. "Something on your mind, Sander?"
"How was my cousin today?"
"The same as always." Dorian gave a slight shrug, casual enough to pass for indifference.
"Anything you want to tell me?"
"Nothing at all."
When he turned his good side toward Dorian, the resemblance was striking—Lysander looked so much like Jasper. The same sculpted lines—shaped by centuries of royal matchmaking, designed to look good in portraits and please a crowd. But where Jasper's features held softness, Lysander's were marred by something colder. A cruder cast to his mouth, a tightness around the eyes. Suspicion flickered behind the pale gray gaze, sharpening what should have been beauty into something brittle and unpleasant. A face built for rule, perhaps—but not for love. And yet, he knew Lysander did love him—in his own way. Twisted and possessive, but love, all the same. It was because of Lysander that he still lived—this body, this machine, was a second chance engineered from obsession. His heart still beat because Lysander had willed it to. And his soul—if such a thing had survived the transition—still wanted, in the same quiet, aching way the old Dorian once had. Before he died.
Lysander half-turned, revealing the damaged side of his face to Dorian's gaze. Burned skin, raised pink tissue curling like a map of pain, the jagged scar from the day of the coup slicing his cheek in half. He had chosen not to hide it beneath glamour or to mend it with the arts of science and magic. No, this mark—this scar—was a testament. A proof of his devotion to the path he'd chosen, the throne he now occupied. If anything, the man had guts, a will that would not bend. Dorian had to give him that. The old King had lacked both.
"You know this body you're wearing is one of a kind," Lysander remarked as if it were an afterthought, the words brushing past Dorian like a shadow. "There's nothing else like it. Nothing like this was ever made before—and nothing like this will ever be made again."
"Yes, I am fully aware of that, my King," Dorian replied, his tone flat, though the weight of the statement pressed against him, something between recognition and resignation.
Lysander's voice softened then, but there was still that edge. "And I know I'll never live up to your expectations, Dorian. No matter what I do or how fiercely I feel about you—the full extent of it, even you may never understand—I'm not him. I'm not that boy." He inhaled, a sigh heavy and dark that lingered just beneath the surface. "And I've made my peace with that. I'm not Jasper, and I'll never be. But as long as you're here with me, it's enough." His words hung between them, fragile, like a confession that wanted to break free but didn't have the courage.
A beat passed, and then he leaned in. "But if you ever dare leave—if you ever step away, for any reason… this body of yours will cease to exist. There'll be no coming back the second time, Dorian."
A silence lingered, thick and suffocating. Lysander's voice dropped once more.
"Now, let's go to bed." The words were meant to be casual, but the undertone—familiar, desperate—undid him in a way he couldn't hide.
Dorian's breath caught—not from the weight of the threat, but from the ragged edge of anguish in Lysander's voice. He had been created by him. Wrought, reshaped, reanimated—every part of him, down to the last synapse, belonged to Lysander. To say he hated him would be too simple, a label far too neat to capture what twisted inside him. There were times when it seemed like hatred, a cold, unrelenting thing, and yet... There was something else beneath it, something far more complex to face.
The body he wore, the one that hummed with the ghost of its original maker's soul, had been fashioned by Lysander's hands. Every breath he took was a gift from a man who had remade him, who had given him life where there should have been none. And that... that tangled thing in Dorian's chest, half resentment and half need, was a debt too deep to ever repay. He hated Lysander, yes. He longed for freedom, for escape from the shadows Lysander cast. But there was a dark tether between them, one that couldn't be severed by simple will.
No matter how much he ached to run, to be free of the man who controlled his life, part of him, the part he feared most, still sought the warmth of that twisted connection. And that was the truth of it—the part that bled beneath the anger, beneath the sharp ache of his existence.
When Dorian fell asleep that night, he dreamt of Jasper. Or perhaps it wasn't a dream at all—more like a shard of memory, half-forgotten and clinging to the edges of his mind, a thing that no longer belonged to him. It was a fragment of his past self, the part that had been human, the part that still ached in a way this new body wasn't supposed to know.
The King's son had a gift with the sword. It was the first thing that caught Dorian's attention—this young man with more fire in his hands than the world had any right to give. Growing up in the gutter where Dorian had, a sword was something you saw only in the hands of the rich and reckless. It wasn't a plaything. It was an expensive and dangerous art. One didn't simply pick up a sword for sport. You had to be willing to give more than blood to make it your own.
In the royal courts, the sword wasn't just a weapon either. It was an extension of who they were, a polished show of strength and grace that could end with a fatal mistake if you weren't careful. The duels were masterfully crafted, beautiful, and brutal—the type of thing that made the crowds roar and the nobles sneer when someone didn't survive to see their prime. You had to be sharp, both in body and in mind, to last. There was no room for anything less.
But what really struck Dorian wasn't the Prince's skill. It wasn't the blade cutting through the air with terrifying precision. No, it was the look in Jasper's eyes—something hungry that made you wonder if he was fighting for honor or for the hell of it. The royals treated swordsmanship like a high-stakes game as if their lives were nothing more than a well-rehearsed play. But Dorian knew the truth. The sharper the blade, the shorter the life. And a King's son, trained to the teeth and caught in his own game, was no exception. Yet, for all his talent, the Prince seemed more than ready to gamble it all for the thrill of the fight.
It was that reckless edge, the kind of dangerous charm that held Dorian's gaze. He had seen a thousand times in the streets—except here, it was wrapped in silk, sharpened with the Prince's ambition.
"Good match today, Prince Jasper?"
Jasper's lips curled into a faint, frustrated frown.
"Could've been better if I was allowed to lose my protections." He tugged off his vest, the one that shielded his chest from any stray deadly jabs. "But my father doesn't want to see my way on this."
Dorian tilted his head as if changing the angle; he might make sense of the Prince—of the flushed skin, wild hair, and fierce gleam that hadn't quite dimmed despite the exertion. Ridiculous, really, how easily Jasper could unmoor him with nothing more than the force of his being. All that raw, reckless passion simmering just beneath the surface like a secret meant for someone else.
But Dorian wasn't inclined to share.
Let the rest of the world look and wonder. He would know. He would be the first—and if he had his way, the only—to see what Jasper was beneath the fire and defiance.
"Perhaps he wants you to live past twenty-five."
The words were soft, almost an afterthought, but they held weight. Dorian had no intention of letting his expression betray the silent agreement he held with the King. Jasper might've wanted to prove his strength, but the world wasn't kind to those who forgot their limits.
Jasper snorted, tossing the vest aside. "And miss out on all the fun? Hardly seems worth it."
"Fun." Dorian's tone was a dry rasp. "Tell me, Your Highness, is that what you call risking your life?"
Jasper met his gaze for a beat, his eyes flashing with rebellion that wasn't quite as lighthearted as he made it seem. "Maybe." He glanced down at the discarded vest. "But who wants to live forever if you're just going to be wrapped in cotton and rules?"
Dorian's lips quirked. "Some of us don't have the luxury of choices."
Jasper's laugh was light but bitter. "Yeah, well, some of us don't have much choice in anything."
Their eyes locked briefly, and for a moment, the distance between them seemed thinner than it had any right to be. It was no longer a question of if it would happen—closing the distance, finally, was inevitable. It was simply a matter of when.
"That project of yours, Dorian." Jasper's voice suddenly changed to uncharacteristically blunt; his gaze fixed on something beyond the immediate space between them. Dorian raised an eyebrow. Jasper calling him by his name.
"It seems like a really bad idea," Jasper continued his words a far cry from the usual teasing that passed between them. "That man I saw in the lab yesterday—"
"You seemed to like him well enough."
"He is beautiful, but that's beside the point," Jasper shot back, his frown deepening. "The point is, he's not a man. Not human. And yet, you expect him to act like one. He doesn't have a beating heart, no soul…" His voice trailed off, his words hanging in the air like smoke, heavy and unwelcome.
Dorian's gaze shifted briefly. "You think I don't know that?" he said, quieter now, the mask of indifference slipping ever so slightly. "We didn't build him to be like a man." His voice softened. "We built him to be better."
"I know what you're trying to do. You and Lysander." Jasper's voice was quiet now; the words dropped like stones, sinking into the space between them with a gravity that made Dorian feel too heavy in his own skin. "Don't, Dorian. It's not going to work. They'll capture you and kill you. Stop before it's too late."
What Dorian should have done was to pull away, to press Jasper for answers, to demand how he knew—how much he knew, what he knew. He should have threatened him, tried to push him into silence. Or perhaps he could have spun it, twisted the truth into something that might ease Jasper's anxiety.
Instead, Dorian's fingers brushed the end of Jasper's braid. He didn't even realize he had moved until the silky strands were caught between his fingers, making his breath hitch.
But it was Jasper who closed the distance. A step, then another, until their bodies pressed together, the heat of him flooding through Dorian's skin. Jasper kissed him then, and it wasn't slow and measured, a dance of power and control. It was a collision of need and desperation. Their lips clashed, and it was so much more than Dorian had ever dared to hope. The kiss was clumsy, yes—awkward in its urgency—but it was also sincere, burning with the truth of their desire.
It was exhilarating and absurdly wonderful—exactly the sort of reckless brilliance that made his heart sing. And also, undeniably foolish, considering they were tangled together in the palace garden, midafternoon sun casting no mercy, with nothing but clipped hedges and blind hope to shield them from discovery.
"Feeling nostalgic tonight, my love?"
The words drifted up from the sheets, soft and unhurried. Dorian stilled. He had been certain Lysander was asleep.
"Perhaps," he said. "What gave me away?"
A rustle of linen, the faint shift of weight beside him. Lysander turned his head, not fully, just enough for his eyes to catch the low gleam of lamplight. "You forget—I've spent more time studying you than anyone else alive. That expression you wear—so tender it might almost pass for mourning. It only ever appears when your mind wanders back to the past." He paused, smile spreading like ink in water. "To Jasper, in particular."
Dorian said nothing. He didn't need to.
Lysander stretched, languid as a satisfied predator. "It makes me wonder why I've waited so long to dispose of him. The old man can't live forever. Once he's gone, what's left to stop me? The people? Please. They've had the fight trained out of them."
"Do not – hurt him."
The word escaped before Dorian could swallow it down. A flicker of something—almost delight—passed over Lysander's face.
"I won't," he said mildly. "Not yet. I'll wait. Let the old man rot in peace, if that's what you want. "Lysander rolled onto his side, letting only the good half of his face show, his expression carved into something close to fondness. "Oh, Dorian," he murmured, voice almost sad, pitying. "I won't hurt him. But you will."